In an alternate world, you might have landed on a page titled “Between Baptism and Ablution: Nothing Less than Exalting in the Spiritual Waters of Istanbul.” The research would have traced our bodily and spiritual relationships with water through urban, architectural, and ecological contexts. In this real world, however, Istanbul’s problems and disasters, much like the city itself, are spectacular enough to warrant unsolicited attention and assert their urgency. Such was the latest spectacle to bloom across the depths and surface of the salty waters of Istanbul: mucilage. Also known as sea snot—a thick, gelatinous organic matter that is basically an overgrown form of natural marine mucus—it had become the daily doom and gloom of many citizens living around the Sea of Marmara. Istanbul, the megapolis where I live, was now adorned with yet another cluster problem co-created with its marine life behaving naturally and its grandiosely mismanaged urban and rural actions.

After its first appearance in 2007, sea snot bloomed again in 2020 in the Sea of Marmara, where it propagated as deep as 40 meters and spread up to 12,000 hectares at the surface. Mucus is naturally present in marine environments: just recall how fish feel in your hand, the slippery rocks along the shore, or the slimy seaweed. Mucilage, on the other hand, is a natural process gone out of whack. It is a complex occurrence of “too many” situations:

Too many nutrients entering the sea through sewage, agricultural runoff, and industrial discharge,

Too much extraction through overfishing, which removes ecological checks,

Too much heat from warming waters, which accelerates biological activity,

Too little circulation due to stratification and stagnation,

Too many and too dense urban, rural, and industrial settlements around the sea.

An ordinarily regenerative process had been stressed into producing a slimy marine Frankenstein—the snotty offspring of overindulgent humans and a consequently overwhelmed sea no longer able to absorb, process, and recover. We now know that Frankenstein was a cautionary tale about lack of care and neglectful relationships rather than one about technology gone wrong.

Rather than a marine monster, then, sea snot is a failure of relation and is more a response than a formation. Our attention, therefore, is directed less on the thing itself than on the field of relations that produces it, but with a slant: There is already ample, and often repetitive, work on what has been done wrong and who is responsible, usually followed by a prescription outlining practices that will fix the problem. We, on the other hand, set out on a different itinerary and asked: if mucilage is yet another manifestation of broken relationships, what unbroken relationships remain, if any? What, and who, does not cause mucilage? Who cares for and maintains good relationships with the sea?

“Forum Occurrences” and “Sea Snotting Expeditions” are the two flagships of the research. “Forum Occurrences” happened indoors at Salt Beyoğlu, where all the groups of Water Assemblies convened to kick off the project, and used performative methods as a research practice. These events first acknowledged the past by reactivating performative works previously created on and around water, semantics, mucilage, and waterways with three distinct engagements: performance, gameplaying, and experimental theater.

“Sea Snotting Expeditions” approached research as a wayfaring practice of knowledge production from within. When asked to gather around the subject of water for Water Assemblies in 2025, it was important for us to engage with water physically: to touch it, physically be immersed in it, swim in it, fish in it, or move across it. Life feels very abstract when mediated with documents, drawings, and social media, but bodily and physical encounters have a way of bringing wonder and curiosity—qualities I think we need the most, especially nowadays, as we live in a world of more disasters and wars. Set afloat upon waters thick with catastrophic slime, “Sea Snotting or Nothing Less than Flamboyant in the Salty Waters of Istanbul” nonetheless amplifies the joy, care, and concerns of those who continue to sustain a rare reciprocal relationship with it.

It is very different to think in a room than to think while walking or sailing at sea. Our minds are embodied, and our intelligence is dependent on our engagement with the world through all our senses—through feelings, not in the sense of emotion, but of sensation. “We are not thinking machines that feel; rather, we are feeling machines that think.” Thinking depends on the continuous sensing of the body as it engages with the world. As bodily states shift through movement and interaction, they are registered as feelings, and feelings guide reasoning. Without this ongoing sensory engagement, thought loses its grounding in life.

Therefore, it was important to think of alternative methods of participation and research. In retrospect, I think we were working with a notion of participatory presence: participation not only in the anthropocentric sense, but as a condition requiring that all those involved in thought and knowledge production be physically present—the sea, mucilage, people, birds, etc. The first step was to be present—together, on the move, and in or by the sea. With presence, noticing and attention come naturally, in real time.

Our research is about water, but it is also about how to do research. What you do with a tree, if you use an axe or a basket, changes the outcome of the process. The tools and methods of research are similarly decisive. Looking back, wayfaring and anecdote-making stand out as our guides. Wayfaring is movement along a path that is continually formed through engagement, where knowledge is collected and generated on the move, open to chance encounters. Anecdotes record situated observations, encounters, and small events along the way—moments that might otherwise disappear.

The project slowly and incrementally began to build its evolving community, called the “Sea Snotting Circle,” with those who are compelled by, devoted to, and in deep communion with the sea—and the world. We resisted the urge to produce anything collectively, turning instead to cultivating correspondences—not only between fellow expeditioners, but with the sea, including its marine, aviary, and plant life. All life forms that sustain an honest relationship with the sea have become our navigators, and they are very varied:

artisan and foraging divers,
coastal fishers,
herons and she who notices them,
swimmers of the Bosphorus,
urban planners,
ship radio operators,
writers,
coral transplanters,
historians of architecture,
underwater archaeologists,
architects,
photographers,
hydrologists,
marine biologists,
botanists of Bosphorus ecologies,
philosophers,
performers,
artists,
curious citizens,
and, in their own ways, the crows, the seagulls, fish, cats, and dogs of Istanbul.

Can we mend this broken relationship—one that shapes all manner of engagement and decision-making, whether personal, social, or political? For now, we cast anchor off Istanbul and share with you the paths of the navigators: settling for bonito while chasing bluefish, stalking herons at night, tracing the exile of the priest of a sunken island church, arriving at the human construct called the city while sea snotting. Grateful to all who wayfared with us through these occurrences and expeditions, especially to all residents of the earth who kindly take care of it.

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Sea Snotting Circle: Ari Algosyan, Emirhan Altuner, Onur Atay, Bilge Bal, Metean Bars, Kerim Bayer, Ahmet Bilir, Deniz Bozok, Ali Cindoruk, Yusuf Çalışkan, Yakup Çetinkaya, Burçin Çıngay, Nazlı Demirel, Aslıhan Demirtaş, Gözdem Gürbüzatik, Yusuf Huysal, Hakan Kabasakal, Onur Hamilton Karaoğlu, Murat Keskin, Gizem Kıygı, Hakan Kökdemir, Abdullah Mallah, Volkan Narcı, Fulya Peker, Emre Sünter, Eylül Şenses, Tuğba Tekerek, Sera Tolgay, İlayda Tunca, Asya Ece Uzmay, Yağmur Yıldırım, Erdoğan Yıldız, Güngör Yorgancı, Müge Ozar Yorgancı, Ezgi Yurteri, Merve Yücel